Put that coffee down, coffee is for closers.

If you know that line, you know it came from an iconic scene in Glengarry Glen Ross. Alec Baldwin steals the movie with his brief time on screen as he chastises the salesmen about their lack of production.

As Blake (Baldwin) sternly tells Shelly (Jack Lemmon) this line, it sets the tone for a meeting filled with insults, arrogance, and unabashed hard truths. Blake brags about his watch costing more than Dave’s (Ed Harris) car, he tells them about a contest where the first two winners get a car and steak knives while everyone else is fired. Blake talks about how much money he made and how shitty everyone else is for not selling worth a damn.

This is real life and reality is harsh. Reality doesn’t always look at you with a hug and say, ‘it will all be ok’, sometimes reality likes to smack you in the mouth instead.

With that being said

Put those fucking carbs down, carbs are for closers.

There exists a large portion of you who sincerely believe that you need high carbs to lift weights and be strong. You think that egg whites, chicken breasts, and 600 grams of rice per day is what you need to do to be cockstrong and look like a jacked Greek God. Wait… Thor, since Viking worship is a thing these days.

The hard reality is that you only need to eat what you use and unless you are competing in bodybuilding or training at a level worthy of the gods, you can do away with a couple hundred grams of Rice Chex per day.

But wait, aren’t carbs energy? Don’t they provide the most efficient sources of fuel to perform? Yes they do, and most people overestimate how many they need to do 3 sets of 3 reps with 4 minute breaks in between.

To repeat information from earlier blogs, I highly recommend starting with the Isocaloric style of eating, which would be 33% of your daily macronutrients from each of the three groups – proteins, carbs, and fats.

Once you have that figured out, you can adjust as you need for your performance and taste, but I will warn you to stay above 25% fat unless you are in contest prep. If you choose to drop below 25% fat, that is your call but I have found most higher level athletes eat a fair amount of fat to perform better. The benefits have been published and studied, so I don’t care to play evidence based parrot and throw studies here, if you need them, you can find them with ease.

Yes I know, carbs taste great. We love to eat those delicious starchy things, but much like a bottle of bourbon, too much is not a good thing. It is easy to overdo your caloric load when you focus on carb intake rather than figuring out that sweet spot of delicious carb goodness.

Mauro DiPasquale wrote about this in the Metabolic Diet back in 2000 and if you are lucky enough to find a copy of that book, read it, learn from it, and absorb it.

If you are serious about performance, body composition, and keeping an eye on your health while doing both, you will analyze your diet with an eye on detail and truth rather than an eye on what you want.

Maybe you can have that coffee after all, but only after taking care of business in front of you.